Posts Tagged Nvidia
9800GT
So I have a new graphics card…1 guess as to what that may be!
I previously had a 9500GT, so it’s a relatively small upgrade, but I got it as some games were crashing/bluescreening, and giving a graphics card/driver related error. When I tried rolling back the drivers, and then reinstalling older & newer versions to no avail, I figured the next logical step was new stuff! 
I have to say, I was suitably impressed, Ubuntu loaded up, picked up my dual screen* setup perfectly, and it was as though nothing had ever changed. Brilliant…now for Windows 7! I foolishly expected minimum fuss, as it had been good to me when I installed it all those many moons ago, only to boot it twice since then. How wrong I was. 800×600 single screen until I downloaded and installed the drivers, and rebooted.
I think we’ll give the point to Ubuntu then!
* About 30 minutes after installing the new graphics card, I’d purchased a new 24″ screen online, to replace my current 2×20″ setup. I need more desk space!
Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) – My Thoughts So Far
As I’m sure plenty of you are aware, Ubuntu 9.04 is due to be released in little over a month’s time. Testing is in full swing (Alpha 6 at time of writing), and the beta should be coming in 2 or 3 weeks (that’s a guess on my part, please don’t hold me to it!). I figured it was about time to try and install it, partly because I’m interested to see how well it currently runs on my dual-head setup, partly because I need to write an article on installing it for Linux Identity 
So – I popped in the Jaunty Live CD, got to the boot menu. All is going well so far, I expected it to not boot though due to my graphics card (Nvidia 9500GT) and a Dual-Screen setup….ok I’m on the desktop (that was quick!). My dual-screen setup was detected just fine (with both monitors at the correct resolution no less!) I was already impressed just from that. I had a play around, and it took me all of 5 minutes to decide that I wanted to give it a proper try out, and to backup my home and install it properly.
1 reboot later, past the (in my opinion) great new GDM theme and nice new splash screen, I’m logged in, installing my nvidia drivers (180.xx) as recommended by a little pop-up. After that install and reboot, I get compiz effects working great, as well as an extended desktop – awesome!
After a bit more playing, I have the dust theme installed (it’s come a long way since I last used it), as well as having emesene using the new notification system (which I have to say looks great!). I’m also running on an ext4 based system, and so far – all is well. Hopefully I’ll have more to say when the beta is released, but this is running on my main desktop, so it’s getting plenty of use
UPDATE:
I’ve got to say, after using jaunty some more this morning, one thing struck me…it’s REALLY quick. Boot is way faster than 8.10 and running general. Shutdown is quicker too
Qosmio Review: Part 3b
Ubuntu Linux
Yes that’s right, I managed to get Ubuntu installed on this machine. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) as it was at the Release Candidate (RC) stage when I tried it.
It all runs perfectly smoothly. I had to change the boot options on the installation CD, due to the Nvidia graphics card, which needed a proprietary driver. This was the most painful part of the installation, as on a screen with a native resolution of 1920×1200, I had to run at 800×600 :’(
After that it was all smooth sailing, I compiled a few apps, and used it as I would my own. Everything worked just fine, I was impressed that the volume control (the disc “thing” on the left of the keyboard) even worked! Sadly the touch buttons didn’t work, but I expected this, as I know they’re controlled by software and not hardware.
I didn’t manage to get the fingerpint reader to work either, which I wasn’t too fussed about, but it would’ve been nice. Overall I was impressed with the Linux experience I had with the Qosmio. The battery life didn’t differ from Windows, though it doesn’t on my own laptop either.
So overall, the Qosmio does actually work pretty well with Ubuntu in my experience, I wasn’t expecting much because Toshiba laptop can be notoriously difficult to get working properly (just read through some of the threads in the UbuntuForums ).
There are also some pictures of the qosmio running Ubuntu if you would like to take a look :
